If there’s one thing that Trackers and Sidekicks don’t have much of, it’s ground clearance. A look under a few of these trucks that have been commissioned for duty other than that of a commuter vehicle or grocery getter and you’re sure to find rumpled and dented sheet metal. With a few of the trucks that are used more frequently off road, your apt to see the driver climb through the window on enter the passengers door. If you’re lucky enough to still have fairly pristine rocker panels and would like to keep them that way read on. I’ll go through a build up of a rocker panel protection system that I designed that you can build yourself. An added feature of this system is that they can be made to fit a stock, non body lifted truck and you only have to give up a mere ½” on ground clearance.

My vehicle is a ’93 2 door so measurements may vary a bit if you’re fitting it to a 4 door. Cut 4 pieces of ¼” steel flat plate to 4” x 5”. Drill a clearance hole for a M10 self tapping bolt. You can modify this to through bolts if you’d like. I’ve yet to have problems with just bolting thru the outer frame rail.

For the main support system I used 1” X 2”rectangular tubing 0.120 wall. Cut 2 pieces 7 ¼” long for the front and 2 pieces 6½” long for the rear. These will be used as the outriggers from the frame. Cut 2 pieces 51½” long. These will be the longitudinal members that are the real load bearing members of the roc-rails.  These will be located ½” inside the rocker panel box section and approx. ½“ below the lowest point on the rocker panels.

Measure back 10” from the front of the main tube to the c/l of the outrigger and tack weld the front outrigger to the main bar. Locate the rear outrigger 10” from the end to the c/l of the tube and tack weld this also.

Locate the plates on the frame. The front edge of the front plate is 1” from the front body mount.  Drill two holes through the frame to hold the plate in place. Locate the rear plate 1” in front of the rear lower control arm mount. Ignore the trailing arm you see in the picture, we’ll talk about that project in an upcoming story on the lift kit. Drill two holes through the frame to hold the plate in place. Fit the welded tubes with outriggers in place and tack weld them so that the main tube is approximately ½ below the rocker panel. I used a few pieces of ¾” square tubing clamped to the outriggers to get the spacing below the rocker panel just right.

Next, cut a piece of 1/8” or 11ga sheet metal approx 51 ½”” long by 10” wide. Measure in 5”. I had a local steel shop bend this at a 20* angle. Clamp this to the bottom of the main tube and space it to provide ½” of clearance to the outer rocker panels.

Cut a piece of 1” round tubing 54”. This should extend from the front to the rear wheel well openings. I used 2 pieces of ½”square tubing to space the side rail tube off the plastic trim panels. Take a little extra care here in lining up the tube to the plate. You can see where I tapered the front and rear inside so I could tuck it in a bit more. I capped these off also.

 Next to attach the plate to the main bar I cut 4 pieces of the 1” x 2” tube into the shape shown along with a few flat plates. I bolted the two pieces together, then clamped them together and welded them to their respective pieces. I elected to attach it this way to prevent the bolt heads from getting sheared off while sliding over a rock. You could just as easily welded this to the main bar but I like being able to un-bolt things, it makes for easier repairs sometimes. Position these at each end and two or three spaced out equally along the main tube. Weld into position as shown.

To help distribute the load a bit when landing on the rails I positioned 2 ‘bumper’ plates underneath the body ‘U’ channel. This bumper is covered with a ¼” piece of rubber to minimize rattling. I cut a few pieces of 1” x 2” to space it to just touch the body and riveted the rubber in place.

Aside from the finish welding, painting and bolting the rails up this project is about done. The only real tough part in this build up is the bending of the steel. I’m sure if you head off to a decent steel shop you can get this done at a reasonable price. The other alternative is to cut piece two pieces of steel and weld them together.

The downside of this design is that the overall weight of these rails is a bit more than I’d like. Remember the attribute of these vehicle is their overall lightness. The upside to this system is that your rocker panels will be virtually impervious to an attack from the rock gods from both the bottom and the side.